TAMING THE TIGER WITHIN
Meditations on Transforming
Difficult Emotions
By: Thich Nhat Hanh
TOPICS
I. From Anger to Compassion
1. Recognition
2. Care of Anger
3. Mindfulness of Others
1. Recognition
One of the main causes of our suffering is
the seed of anger inside of us.
8/21/12
Seed
Recognize and embrace your anger when it
manifests itself. Care for it with
tenderness rather than suppressing it.
8/23/12
Recognize
We are more than our anger, we are more
than our suffering.
8/27/12
More
Why do you get angry so easily? Is it
because your seed of anger is too strong?
8/29/12
Easily
If you get angry easily, it may be because
the seed of anger in you has been
watered frequently over many years, and
unfortunately you have allowed it or
even encouraged it to be watered.
8-31-12
Watered
Many other people, confronted with the
same situation, would not get angry like
you. They hear the same words, they see
the same situation, and yet they are able
to stay calm and not get carried away.
9/5/12
Calm
Anger has roots in nonanger elements. It has
roots in the way we live our daily life. If we
take good care of everything in us, without
discrimination, we prevent our negative
energies from dominating. We reduce the
strength of our negative seeds so that they
won’t overwhelm us.
9/7/12
Anger
Before we can make deep changes in our
lives, we have to look into our diet, our
way of consuming. We have to live in
such a way that we stop consuming the
thing that poisons us and intoxicates us.
Then, we will have the strength to allow
the best in us to arise, and we will no
longer be victims of anger, of frustration.
9/11/12
Deep Changes
Look at someone who is angry. When you
see the tension in her, you become
frightened, because the bomb in her may
explode any minute.
9/13/12
Look
Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror
and look at yourself. When you are angry,
you are not very attractive, you are not
presentable. Hundreds of muscles on your
face become very tense. Your face looks
like a bomb ready to explode.
9/17/12
Mirror
When you see your face looking like a bomb ready
to explode, you are motivated to do something to
change it. You know in your heart what you can
do to look more attractive. You don’t need
cosmetics. You need only to breathe peacefully,
calmly, and to smile mindfully. If you can do
that one or two times, you will look much better.
Just look in the mirror, breathing in calmly,
breathing out smiling, and you will feel relief.
9/21/12
Breathing
It is very helpful to see yourself in
moments when you are angry. It is a bell
of mindfulness.
9/19/12
Helpful
Anger always goes together with
confusion, with ignorance.
9/26/12
Confusion
Anger is born from ignorance and wrong
perceptions. You may be the victim of a
wrong perception. You may have
misunderstood what you heard and what
you saw. You may have a wrong idea of
what has been said, what has been done.
9/28/2012
Perceptions
Every one of us must practice looking
deeply into our perceptions, whether we
are a father, mother, child, partner, or
friend.
10/2/12
Looking Deeply
Our body is impermanent, our emotions
are impermanent, and our perceptions
are impermanent. Our anger, our
sadness, our love, our hatred, and our
consciousness are also impermanent.
10/4/12
Impermanent
Anger and love are both of an organic
nature, and thus they both can change.
Hate can always be transformed into
love. And unfortunately, many times
love is transformed into hate.
10/8/12
Love and Hate
Many of us begin a relationship with great love,
very intense love. So intense that we believe
that, without our partner, we cannot survive. Yet
if we do not practice mindfulness, it takes only
one or two years for our love to be transformed
into hatred. Then, in our partner’s presence we
have the opposite feeling, we feel terrible. It
becomes impossible to live together anymore, so
divorce is the only way. Love has been
transformed into hatred; our flower has become
garbage.
10/10/12
Intense Love
If you see elements of garbage in you, such
as fear, despair, and hatred, don’t panic.
As a good organic gardener, a good
practitioner, you can face this: “I
recognize that there is garbage in me. I
am going to transform this garbage into
nourishing compost that can make love
reappear.”
10/12/12
Garbage
Just because anger or hate is present does
not mean that the capacity to love and
accept is not there; love is always in you.
10/16/2012
In You
In a time of anger or despair, even if we feel
overwhelmed, our love is still there. Our
capacity to communicate, to forgive, to be
compassionate is still there. You have to
believe this. We are more than our anger,
we are more than our suffering. We must
recognize that we do have within us the
capacity to love, to understand, to be
compassionate, always.
10/18/12
Love Is Still There
2. Care of Anger
We were never advised to suppress our
anger. We were taught to go back to
ourselves and take good care of it.
10/22/12
Care
It’s not healthy to keep your anger inside
for long. I always advise my friends,
“Do not keep your anger to yourself for
more than one day.”
10/26/12
Not Healthy
As practitioners, we have to be anger
specialists. We have to attend to our
anger; we have to practice until we
understand the roots of our anger and
how it works.
10/29/12
Anger Specialists
Accept your anger because you know, you
understand, that you can take care of it;
you can transform it into positive energy.
11/1/12
Accept
Anger is like a howling baby, suffering
and crying. Your anger is your baby.
The baby needs his mother to embrace
him. You are the mother. Embrace your
baby.
11/12/12
Howling Baby
Just like our organs, our anger is part of us.
When we are angry, we have to go back
to ourselves and take good care of our
anger. We cannot say, “Go away, anger, I
don’t want you.” When you have a
stomachache, you don’t say, “I don’t
want you stomach, go away.” No, you
take care of it. In the same way, we have
to embrace and take good care of our
anger.
11/14/12
“Like Our Organs”
When the mother embraces her baby, her
energy penetrates him and soothes him.
This is exactly what you have to learn to
do when anger begins to surface. You
have to abandon everything that you are
doing, because your most important task
is to go back to yourself and take care of
your baby, your anger. Nothing is more
urgent than taking good care of your
baby.
11/10/12
“Most Important Task”
Just embracing your anger, just breathing
in and breathing out, that is good
enough. The baby will feel relief right
away.
11/20/12
“Breathing in and Breathing Out”
In the beginning you may not understand
the nature of your anger, or why it has
come to be. But if you know how to
embrace it with the energy of
mindfulness, it will begin to become
clear to you.
11/27/12
Clear
Mindfulness means to be present, to be
aware of what is going on. This energy is
very crucial for the practice. The energy
of mindfulness is like a big brother or
big sister, holding a young one in her
arms, taking good care of the suffering
child, which is our anger, despair, or
jealousy.
11/29/12
Be Present, Be Aware
Sit and follow your breathing, or practice
walking meditation to generate the
energy of mindfulness, and embrace
your anger. After ten or twenty minutes,
your anger will open herself to you, and
suddenly you will see the true nature of
your anger.
12/3/12
True Nature
When we embrace anger and take good
care of our anger, we obtain relief. We
can look deeply into it and gain many
insights. One of the first insights may be
that the seed of anger in us has grown too
big, and is the main cause of our misery.
As we begin see this reality, we realize
that the other person, whom our anger is
directed at , is only a secondary cause.
The other person is not the real cause of
our anger.
12/5/12
Insights
When anger manifests in us, we must
recognize and accept that anger is there
and that it needs to be tended to. At this
moment we are advised not to say
anything, not to do anything out of
anger. We immediately return to
ourselves and invite the energy of
mindfulness to manifest also, in order to
embrace, recognize, and take good care of
our anger.
12/7/12
Manifests
Practice looking deeply into the nature of
your anger. The practice has two phases.
The first is embracing and recognizing:
“My dear anger, I know you are there, I
am taking good care of you.” The second
phase is to look deeply into the nature of
your anger to see how it has come about.
12/11/12
Practice
Whether you are driving, walking,
cooking, or washing, continue to embrace
your anger with mindfulness. By doing
so, you have a chance to look deeply into
the nature of your anger.
12/13/12
Continue to Embrace
The practices of mindful breathing and
mindful walking outdoors are wonderful
ways to embrace your anger.
12/17/12
Practices
Every mental formation----anger, jealousy,
despair, etc.----is sensitive to
mindfulness the way all vegetation is
sensitive to sunshine. By cultivating the
energy of mindfulness, you can heal your
body and your consciousness.
12/19/12
Heal
People who use venting techniques like
hitting a pillow or shouting are actually
rehearsing anger. When someone is
angry and vents their anger by hitting a
pillow, they are learning a dangerous
habit. They are training in aggression.
Instead, a wise practitioner generates the
energy of mindfulness and embraces her
anger every time it manifests.
1/8/13
“Training”
When you cook potatoes, you need to keep
the fire going for at least fifteen or
twenty minutes. You cannot eat raw
potatoes. In the same way, you have to
cook your anger on the fire of
mindfulness, and it may take ten
minutes, or twenty minutes, or longer.
1/10/13
Cook Your Anger
Anger is in us in the form of a seed. The
seeds of love and compassion are also
there. In our consciousness, there are
many negative seeds and also many
positive seeds. The practice is to avoid
watering the negative seeds, and to
identify and water the positive seeds
every day.
1/14/13
Water the Positive Seeds
If positive seeds are watered in a person’s
life, it is partly because of luck and partly
because of effort.
1/16/13
Effort
Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the
energy of hate, of anger, of fear. We
forget that in us there are other kings of
energy that can manifest also. If we
know how to practice, we can bring back
the energy of insight, of love, and of
hope in order to embrace the energy of
fear, of despair, and of anger.
1/18/13
Energy
Inside every one of us is a garden, and
every practitioner has to go back to their
garden and take care of it. May be in the
past, you left it untended for a long time.
You should know exactly what is going
on in your own garden, and try to put
everything in order. Restore the beauty;
restore the harmony in your garden. If it
is well tended, many people will enjoy
your garden.
1/23/13
Inside
With the energy of mindfulness, you can
look into the garbage and say, “I am not
afraid. I am capable of transforming the
garbage back into love.”
1/25/13
I Am Not Afraid
The energy of mindfulness contains the energy of
concentration as well as the energy of insight.
Concentration helps you to focus on just one thing.
With concentration, the energy of looking becomes
more powerful. Because of that, it can make a
breakthrough that is insight. Insight always has the
power of liberating you. If mindfulness is there, and
you know how to keep mindfulness alive,
concentration will be there too. And if you know how
to keep concentration alive, insight will come also. So
mindfulness recognizes, embraces, and relieves.
Mindfulness helps us look deeply in order to gain
insight. Insight is the liberating factor. It is what frees
us and allows transformation to happen. This is the
practice of taking care of anger.
1/29/13
The Energy of Concentration and Insight
Every time you feel lost, alienated, or cut
off from life, or from the world, every
time you feel despair, anger, or
instability, practice going home.
Mindful breathing is the vehicle that you
use to go back to your true home.
1/31/13
Practice Going Home
3. Mindfulness of Others
At the moment you become angry, you
tend to believe that your misery has been
created by another person. You blame
him or her for all your suffering. But by
looking deeply, you realize that the seed
of anger in you is the main cause of your
suffering.
2/4/13
Main Cause of Your Suffering
Even though we are primarily responsible
for our own anger, we believe naïvely
that if we can say something or do
something to punish the other person, we
will suffer less.
2/6/2013
We Are Responsible
If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to
do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not
to run after the person you believe to be the
arsonist. If you run after the person you
suspect has burned your house, your house
will burn down while you are chasing him or
her. That is not the action of a wise person.
You must go back and put out the fire. When
you are angry, if you continue to interact with
or argue with the other person, if you try to
punish him or her, you are acting exactly like
someone who runs after the arsonist while
their home goes up in flames.
2/8/2013
Put Out the Fire
Whatever you do or say in a state of anger
will only cause more damage in the
relationship. Instead, try not to do
anything or say anything when you are
angry.
2/12/13
More Damage
In taking good care of yourself, you take good
care of your beloved one. Self-love is the
foundation for your capacity to love the
other person. If you don’t take good care of
yourself, if you are not happy, if you are not
peaceful, you cannot make the other person
happy. You cannot help the other person;
you cannot love. Your capacity for loving
another person depends entirely on your
capacity for loving yourself, for taking care
of yourself.
2/14/13
Taking Good Care of Yourself
When you make another suffer, he or she
will try to find relief by making you
suffer more.
2/19/13
Make Another Suffer
When you say something unkind, when
you do something in retaliation, your
anger increases. You make the other
person suffer, and they try hard to say or
do something back to make you suffer,
and get relief from their sufferings. That
is how conflict escalates.
2/21/13
Escalates
If we really understood and remembered
that life was impermanent, we would do
everything we could to make the other
person happy right here and right now.
If we spend twenty-four hours being
angry at our beloved, it is because we are
ignorant of impermanence.
2/25/13
Impermanence
The reason we are foolish enough to make
ourselves suffer and make the other person
suffer is that we forget that we and the
other person are impermanent. Someday,
when we die, we will lose all our
possessions, our power, our family,
everything. Our freedom, peace, and joy in
the present moment is the most important
thing we have. But without an awakened
understanding of impermanence, it is not
possible to be happy.
2/27/13
Awakened
When you try to make each other suffer,
the result is an escalation of suffering on
both sides. Both of you need compassion
and help. Neither of you needs
punishment.
3/1/13
Compassion and Help
When your beloved makes you suffer
because she is angry, at first you feel that
she deserves punishment. You want to
punish her because she has made you
suffer. But after ten or fifteen minutes of
walking meditation and mindful
looking, you realize that what she needs
is help and not punishment.
3/5/13
Realize
When you get angry with someone, please
don’t pretend that you are not angry.
Don’t pretend that you don’t suffer. If
the other person is dear to you, then you
have to confess that you are angry, and
that you suffer. Tell him or her in a calm,
loving way.
3/7/13
Don’t Pretend
It’s very natural that when you suffer,
although you know how to practice, you
still need the other person to help you in
your practice. “Please help me. Darling,
I need your help.” That is the language
of true love.
3/11/13
The Language of True Love
When you get angry with the other person,
you have the tendency to say, “Don’t
touch me! I don’t need you. I can
manage very well without you!” But you
have made the commitment to take good
care of each other.
3/13/13
Tendency
We are advised to tell the other person that
we are angry, that we suffer. “Darling, I
suffer, I’m angry, and I want you to
know it.” Then if you are a good
practitioner, you also add, “I’m doing my
best to take care of my anger.” And you
conclude with the third sentence,
“Please, do help me,” because he or she
is still very intimate, very close to you.
You still need him or her. Expressing
your anger in this way is extremely wise.
3/15/13
Extremely Wise
You do not have to hide your anger. You
have to let the other person know that
you are angry and that you suffer. This
is very important.
3/19/13
Very Important
Punishing the other person is selfpunishment. That is true in every
circumstance.
3/21/13
Self-Punishment
If I have a cruel thought or if my words
carry hatred in them, then those thoughts
and words will be reborn. It will be
difficult to catch them and pull them
back. They are like a runaway horse.
3/25/13
Thoughts
In the beginning you told each other, “I
cannot live without you. My happiness
depends on you.” You made declarations
like that. But when you are angry, you
say the opposite: “I don’t need you!
Don’t come near me!” You prefer to go
into your room and lock the door. You
try your best to demonstrate that you
don’t need the other person. This is a
human , very ordinary tendency. But this
is not wisdom.
3/27/13
This is Not Wisdom
To say, “Darling, I love you,” is good, it is important.
It is natural that we share our joy and good
feelings with our beloved one. But you also have
to let the other person know when you suffer,
when you are angry with him or her. You have to
express what you feel. You have the right. This is
true love. “Darling, I am angry at you. I suffer.”
Try your best to say it peacefully. There may be
some sadness in your voice, that’s fine. Just don’t
say something to punish or to blame. “Darling, I
am angry. I suffer, and I need you to know it.”
This is the language of love, because you have
vowed to support each other, as partners, as
husband and wife.
4/8/13
You Have the Right
If you are capable of writing or saying these three
sentences, you are capable of true love. You are
using the authentic language of love. “Darling, I
suffer, and I want you to know it. Darling, I am
doing my best; I’m trying not to blame anyone
else, including you. Since we are so close to each
other, since we have made a commitment to each
other, I feel that I need your support and your help
to get out of this state of suffering, of anger.”
Using the three sentences to communicate with the
other person can quickly reassure and relieve him
or her. The way you handle your anger will
inspire a lot of confidence and respect in the other
person, and in yourself. This is not very difficult
to do.
4/10/13
“Language of Love”
In true love, there is no pride. You cannot
pretend that you don’t suffer. You
cannot pretend that you are not angry.
This kind of denial is based on pride.
“Angry? Me? Why should I be angry?
I’m okay.” But, in fact, you are not okay.
You are in hell. Anger is burning you up,
and you must tell your partner, your son,
your daughter.
4/12/13
No Pride
When you are angry, and you suffer, please
go back and inspect very deeply the
content, the nature of your perceptions.
If you are capable of removing the wrong
perception, peace and happiness will be
restored in you, and you will be able to
love the other person again.
4/16/13
Inspect
Start a peace talk with your beloved one: “Darling, in
the past we have made each other suffer so much.
Both of us were victims of our anger. We made a
hell for each other. Now, I want to change. I want
us to become allies, so that we can protect each
other, practice together, and transform our anger
together. Let us build a better life from now on,
based on the practice of mindfulness. Darling, I
need your help. I need your support. I need your
collaboration. I cannot succeed without you.” You
have to say these words to your partner, your son,
your daughter----it’s time to do it. This is
awakening. This is love.
4/18/13
“Peace Talk”
Nothing can heal anger except compassion.
4/22/13
Compassion
Compassion is a beautiful flower born of
understanding. When you get angry
with someone, practice breathing in and
out mindfully. Look deeply into the
situation to see the true nature of your
own and the other person’s suffering,
and you will be liberated.
4/24/13
Liberated
The nectar of compassion is so wonderful.
If you are committed to keeping it alive,
then you are protected. What the other
person says will not touch off the anger
and irritation in you, because
compassion is the real antidote for anger.
4/29/13
Antidote for Anger
If you allow compassion to spring from
your heart, the fire of anger will die right
away.
5/1/13
“Allow”
If it is your partner who is angry, just
listen. Listen and do not react. Do your
best to practice compassionate listening.
Do not listen for the purpose of judging,
criticizing, or analyzing. Listen only to
help the other person express himself
and find some relief from his suffering.
5/3/13
“Listen”
There are many ways to communicate, and
the best way is to show that you no
longer feel any anger or condemnation.
You show that you understand and
accept the other person. You
communicate this not only by your
words but also by your way of being---with your eyes full of compassion and
your actions full of tenderness.
5/7/13
“Many Ways to Communicate”
When you understand the situation of the
other person when you understand the
nature of suffering, anger will vanish,
because it is transformed into
compassion.
5/9/13
“Transformed”
When you begin to see the suffering in the
other person, compassion is born, and
you no longer consider that person as
your enemy. You can love your enemy.
The moment you realize that your socalled enemy suffers. And you want to
help him stop suffering, he ceases to be
your enemy.
5/13/13
Compassion is Born
When we hate someone, and are angry at her, it is
because we do not understand her or the
circumstances she comes from. By practicing
deep looking, we realize that if we grew up
like her, in her set of circumstances and in her
environment, we would be just like her. That
kind of understanding removes your anger,
and suddenly that person is no longer your
enemy. Then you can love her. As long as she
remains an enemy, love is impossible.
5/15/13
Deep Looking
When you touch the seed of
understanding, mindfulness, and lovingkindness in you, you make these
qualities grow stronger for both your
own happiness and the happiness of
other people and all living beings around
you.
5/17/13
Stronger
Happiness is not an individual matter. If
one of you is not happy, it will be
impossible for the other person to be
happy.
5/21/13
No Individual Matter